Kirriemuir, 1890 In August 1890, the wife of a Kirriemuir landlord, John Webster, fell ill. The local doctor attended the ailing woman and diagnosed gastroenteritis. Within 3 days, Mrs Webster had died, but this did not conclude the matter. Suspicions were rife that something sinister lurked beneath the surface of this cut-and-dried case. John had […]
April, 1821 In the early hours of a Saturday morning in late April, 1821, Margaret Shuttleworth woke up and made her way down to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. At the foot of the stairs lay the lifeless body of her husband, Henry. Neighbours awoke to Margaret’s deafening screams from the inn […]
Law hill, August 2001 As Anne Nicoll walked her parents’ Airedale terrier by the Law on 2nd August 2001, she became the victim of a brutal and senseless killing. Stabbed a total of 29 times, the body of Anne Nicoll had been so savagely mauled that even her bones had been cut. It emerged that […]
Shrouded in the mystery of time long past, the records sadly destroyed by the final battles it was engaged in. Dundee Castle was a legendary place in ancient Scotland’s history where King’s and Queen’s visited, and many battles were fought. The ancient settlement of Dundee, which in its earliest days consisted of two main streets, […]
At around 174m tall and incorrectly named by many as ‘The Law Hill’, the word ‘Law’ refers to the Anglo-Saxon ‘hlāw’, which means ‘mound’. Actually, it means ‘grave-mound’, so read into that what you will about what lies beneath the surface. Used as a settlement over 3500 years ago, the Law has stood guard over […]
Well it’s been a very stormy start to winter with storms Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva and Frank hitting our shores, and no doubt more on the way. As much as we all like to have a good moan about the weather, it’s certainly not been the worst Dundee has ever seen! We’ve taken a look at […]
Many of us remember going to see the Tay Whale skeleton on display in the McManus, but do you all know the story behind the incredible chase? It was November 1883 when the 40ft humpback whale first appeared in the Firth of Tay, just off the shore of Dundee. Whaling was big business in Dundee […]
Piracy has been around almost as long as sailing itself. Our tale lands us near the end of the ‘Golden Age’ of piracy, with the rise and fall of a man from Dundee called William Kidd.
George Mealmaker was a legendery Dundee radical from the late 1700s, he founded the ‘Friends of Liberty’ – a slightly rowdy bunch who supported the ideals of freedom, liberty and equality for all.
The song ‘Bonnie Susie Cleland’ tells a particularly brutal tale of a young Scots woman being burned at the stake by her family for falling in love with an Englishman.